That's exactly what I thought. In fact, I think South Park may be the perfect show for small video sizes. The resulting file had poorer image quality (to be expected), but the motion was quite close to the original. I think that due to the style of animation in the show, 5fps is all you need. If I was trying to do Dragonball Z, however, I don't think the results would be as good.

But I agree, live action would be pretty poor.